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Billy Corgan, Lord of the Ring

Remember Billy Corgan? Twenty years after Siamese Dream, the once and reigning frontman of the Smashing Pumpkins claims to have located the lost rebellious spirit of rock 'n' roll in the most artificial of places: the wrestling ring. Sam Lipsyte spends a blood-splattered, pile-driving Friday night in Chicago with the alt-rocker who wants to be the Vince McMahon of alt-wrestling

Remember Billy Corgan? Twenty years after Siamese Dream, the once and reigning frontman of the Smashing Pumpkins claims to have located the lost rebellious spirit of rock 'n' roll in the most artificial of places: the wrestling ring. Sam Lipsyte spends a blood-splattered, pile-driving Friday night in Chicago with the alt-rocker who wants to be the Vince McMahon of alt-wrestling

"Why?" Billy Corgan wants to know. "Why do they do it?"

We're in an old wooden barn in Willowbrook, Illinois. It's no ordinary barn. It's the Barn at Arabian Knights Farms, huge and high-ceilinged, festooned with festive kitsch. The rafters are rigged with a grid of filtered lights. A single silver disco ball dangles down. The place is perfect for a backwoods wedding or a shotgun bar mitzvah, or maybe Flashdance with animals. You could recruit the petting goats outside.

Heavy beats pump from the speakers as Corgan repeats his question. "Why do they do it? Why do they get in the ring?"

By "they" Corgan means the wrestlers warming up in the center of the barn, stretching, bouncing off the ropes, rolling across the mat. Tonight's sold-out show is staged by Resistance Pro, a rising indie wrestling company in Chicago whose unpaid creative director happens to be one of the biggest rock stars of the '90s.

"I played in all of these places," Corgan says, gesturing to the barn around us, but he means all the dingy clubs the Smashing Pumpkins played in "for a pizza." I spent some fun, futile years in a band myself, and my first thought is, You got a pizza? My second thought is, What the hell is Billy Corgan, rock 'n' roll grandee, doing hanging out with this motley posse of wrestlers in suburban Illinois?

And not just hanging out. He's the dreamer-in-chief, primary composer of this symphony of flying meat. After all, "creative director" is just a fancy phrase for "booker," the old wrestling term for the guy who plans the match-ups, the angles, the story lines. Like the writer of a television series, Corgan must build a world and people it with villains (a.k.a. "heels"), good guys ("babyfaces"), and those riding the line in between. He must create character arcs, plan for future turns in the plot, even shifts in a wrestler's basic nature, while staying flexible enough to respond to audience reaction. It's the wrestlers, of course, who must conduct the violent pantomime, but it all flows from the booker's vision.

"I sit in almost every meeting," Corgan tells me. "I tweak the matches to make sure the wrestlers understand the emotional import of what I want told in the ring."

Corgan appears even taller than the tall gothy guy I remember from the Pumpkins' heyday. He's got a few wrinkles around the eyes but looks startlingly unchanged from that fellow with the evil angel face singing "I'm in love with my sadness" during the Clinton administration. Even sitting in a folding chair in an old barn, he exudes commanding energy, and while it's not altogether warm, it's not standoffish. Corgan possesses the charisma of the self-contained, and you don't sense he requires a lot of hugs to get out of the house in the morning. Once mocked for his oversensitivity to slights, he seems to have hardened a bit, but his passion for music and wrestling remains fresh.

The two industries share a similar "crassness," he says. Both are "flesh trades." But the wrestlers know the deal, and Corgan thinks there is something still unsullied about their world, especially at the level of Resistance Pro.

"Wrestling's one of the last true subcultures left in America," Corgan says. "Being off the radar gives it a certain funky credibility. That's why we can be a little more edgy—the unobserved part of it all."

He turns with his famous grin, his eyes glinting mischievously as he rises and pulls himself into the ring.

"I've got to go to work."

···

Around here, of course, everybody knows about Billy Corgan, the Chicago native who became an international superstar fronting the Smashing Pumpkins, whose most famous songs—"1979," "Today," and "Bullet with Butterfly Wings"—owned the airwaves in their day. Corgan was always a controversial figure, dividing rock fans with his heavy hooks and whiny delivery. Some found him too earnest and grandiose, without enough self-reflective distance from his rock-star status. Some thought him a narcissistic dick. Millions, though, plugged into a cathartic power they found in the Pumpkins' music, and especially in Corgan, feeling something nearly mystical in his cherubic growls and quavers, his crunchy riffs.

Pavement, who, with their clever but also often heartbreaking lyrics, stylistic adventuresomeness, and irony-piercing irony, stood as the antithesis of the Pumpkins, wrote some funny, if nasty, lines about Corgan's band (I don't understand what they mean / And I could really give a fuck), which sparked a feud that Corgan hasn't entirely put behind him. When Pavement reunited for some shows a few years ago, Corgan accused them of being sellouts, interested only in money. One had to live through the '90s to understand what fighting words "sellout" used to be, and it was a phrase that dogged the Pumpkins in their prime.

The truth is they were easy targets, with their often goofy poetry and rock swagger, but from time's vantage it seems slightly more complicated, all of these skirmishes playing out on matrices of class and coolness and warring traditions. After all the feuds and friendships, including a creative and romantic period with Courtney Love, Corgan is still here, still leading the Pumpkins. He's the only original member, though in some ways that was always the case, known as he was to play everything but the drums on the band's records. At 46, Corgan may have a smaller profile, but he's in possession of a legitimate legacy—as a proto-emo pioneer, a composer of supremely popular rock, and the kid who was told that his cause was a lost one, that nobody would listen to his voice, and who still had the fortitude, or megalomania (same thing?), to forge ahead. Now add wrestling impresario to the list.

It's a very different gig, to be sure, but it's still about putting asses in seats. The ticket buyers for tonight's show have begun to fill the 300 or so chairs that surround three sides of the ring. And by ticket buyers I mean all kinds of folks, from large gentlemen who look like they do some wrestling themselves, albeit after 18 or 19 beers and in a dirt field lit by headlights, to high school sweethearts who are maybe out on a semi-humorous date. There are lots of little kids, some capable of shouting the most vile exhortations, and a bunch of young men near the concession stand who could pass for a team of IT guys out to get loaded. The founders of Resistance Pro, Jacques and Gabriel Baron, two friendly brothers in their midthirties, mill about. Once, years and hundreds of pounds ago, they'd dreamed of being a pro tag team.

The barn is packed as Billy leads the other three members of his band to where they will sign merchandise and pose for pictures. About forty or fifty people line up to get their Pumpkins paraphernalia autographed, and Corgan has a smile for all of them. He insists that nobody comes to the wrestling for him, but the signing does appear to goose the gate.

It's almost showtime. A buxom woman in a short skirt wanders the aisles like a cigarette girl with her strapped tray of Popchips, and a man dressed as Jesus sells raffle tickets for a month's supply. A mysterious woman with an Eastern European accent and bordello fashions approaches young guys in the audience with a strange proposition for which they will have to sign a waiver and leave the barn. I'm intrigued until I discover that the assignations exist to sample some smokeless tobacco, which I gather is not code for anything.

Early on the evening's card are two charismatic tag teams, including Lock Up, who arrive handcuffed in orange jumpsuits with their suit-wearing "warden." After some threats from the manager of the opposing team, Da Soul Touchaz, Suge D of Lock Up takes the mike, incredulous that Da Soul Touchaz could predict victory: "You know I just got out of solitary, so maybe I'm a little hazy..." This is performative, of course, a booker's move, and the delivery is perfect—jokey and in-character at once.

Now here comes a babyface, "The Inspiration" Brady Pierce, a tough, country-twanging Adonis, in a wild match with Mad Man Pondo, a 44-year-old veteran who could possibly pass for Tom Sizemore's Juggalo cousin. Pondo wrestles in the hard-core style, which means staple guns, chairs, and bludgeoning instruments are welcome. At first it's just a flurry of standard moves, head butts and thrust kicks and attempted sweeps, but the crowd wants its hard-core harder.

"We want weapons! We want weapons!" chants one group.

"Pop-chips! Pop-chips!" cries another.

Soon Pierce and Pondo pound each other with staples and chairs. Even a saw blade makes an appearance, as well as a golf putter swung at Pierce's nethers. It's all terrible and funny and fake and strangely shocking, the way it's supposed to be. The Wrestler, the Mickey Rourke movie, got to the heart of darkness in indie wrestling, but by focusing on one man's decline, some of the glee got lost. Yes, it can be a brutal life, but at some point, at least, these guys really loved pro wrestling. Fact is, you better enjoy it, because that may be your only reward. Except for the hurt. After all, there's nothing like actual blood gushing from your face to gull people into thinking you're bleeding.

Brady Pierce loses the match but wins the crowd and the approbation of his opponent. "I would fight with you again," says Pondo, playing up the brohood rhetoric, "and then go with you and drink beer!" The audience cheers. A story line of friendship has been hatched. The Inspiration, who is 99 percent perspiration, is on the rise.

According to Jacques Baron, Corgan's involvement with Resistance Pro has its roots in Jacques's wife's Pumpkins fanaticism. One day, after reading about Corgan's fondness for wrestling, she contacted the local hero on Facebook, asking if he'd have any interest in helping to publicize a homegrown brand. Turned out he was more than interested. Corgan gave the Barons about $35,000 and came on board as creative director. At shows, Corgan takes none of the gate. Only in the event of a large TV deal, he says, would he expect to make any money from Resistance Pro.

Back in the barn, a long-respected veteran named Mikey Whipwreck is getting pummeled by "Lonesome" Jay Bradley. Yes, I know it's preordained, but I have no idea who's supposed to win, and while it's clear the punches are pulled and the slams are more like acrobatic duets than unilateral assaults, huge bodies still fly and collide and it's genuinely scary. I've been sitting with a Chicago buddy, and we've both been cracking jokes, seeing it all as a hoot, but I'm starting to feel the twinges of something else. Even though the violence here is aped, I still feel traces of that nauseating adrenal charge, the swirl of exhilaration, the guilt and fear you get from watching the real thing. The bloodlust of the crowd, playful or not, increases the sensation. "Kick him in the face!" screams a little girl.

The crowd loves these two, the scrappy underdog against a man Corgan calls a "natural bully." Bradley is tall and immensely built, the superstud linebacker, and though he has a rugged look, Corgan perceived a more urbane side to him, somebody who could smoothly "go into a bar and pick up a chick." Hence the "Lonesome" moniker, like "Tiny" for a big man, because Jay would never be lonesome. "Fans like to cheer the bully who deserves to be a bully somehow," says Corgan. "If you're the wrong kind of bully, people will boo you. But Jay's the kind of bully people will cheer. The cocky babyface."

It's an interesting phrase coming from Corgan, as "cocky babyface" might have described his persona earlier in his career. He says he's too old for any heelish behavior these days, but he has been under the spotlight recently for his views, or purported views, on the state of the union. Last March, Salon ran a story about Corgan's closeness to Infowars conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, citing some guest appearances on Jones's show. Corgan likes Jones, thinks the kinds of issues he raises—possible government involvement in 9/11 and the Oklahoma City bombing; the need for citizens to resist government and corporate surveillance—should be part of the conversation, but claims not to share his views. Corgan says he's a lone wolf when it comes to politics: "I don't agree with anybody."

He also points out that no matter what you say, you can't hurt your record sales, because nobody's buying records anyway. His main peeve, however, seems to be about the loss of the rebellious tradition in music and America. It's hard to think of a major rock band of today galvanizing people to question the conventional wisdom. But Corgan sees sparks of some new and perhaps not yet co-opted weirdness in wrestling, in Resistance Pro, in this very barn.

We're deep into the major matches and it's now, my blood sugar spiked from chaining Dr Pepper, that I begin to get a little giddy, a little _involved. _I'm lurching in my seat with every suplex and pile driver, cheering, even chanting. I feel clammy and crazed. I wouldn't mind seeing that staple gun come out again. And maybe some letter openers and one of those big guillotine paper trimmers. OfficeMax could sponsor the show. Call it Battle of the Raging Temp Clerks. Maybe _I _should be the fucking booker.

Before I know it, it's the main event. The crowd is primed. "The Ego" Robert Anthony, the champion, stands before a Hercules named Bobby Lashley, a onetime star of the WWE. They do death stares and crank up the trash talk. There's a crackle in the air, because these guys seem ready to make, if not the ultimate sacrifice, a stark and savage one.

"Get him, Bobby!" somebody shouts.

"Ego, Ego!" calls another.

"Pop-chips!"

"Rip his head off!"

"Tear him up!"

"Do his tas!"

I turn at this last shout and see it's one of the IT wags, joyfully wasted.

I laugh. My fugue state starts to recede. Or maybe the soda is wearing off. The bell rings and the audience roars and the Ego and Lashley begin their soaring, bruising dance. Up close, in this packed barn on a Friday night in Willowbrook, Illinois, these guys are minor gods. And also grown men in tights destroying their bodies bit by bit in their effort to pretend they are destroying one another's bodies. It's all so lame and stupid and thrilling.

And Billy Corgan? I assume he could be anywhere tonight, given his fame and fortune. But he's in this barn, watching the match, seeing his designs play out, just like a set list for a concert, gauging their effects on the crowd, controlling the ebb and flow, the suspenseful builds, the interludes, the climax, the denouement. Jay Bradley says Corgan likened planning a rock show to booking a wrestling event, quoting Billy that it's all about "crowd control," or teasing out the emotions of the audience for the perfect experience. It's an art form that suits him to the core, and I believe that Corgan loves it here, that a man who once filled stadiums finds a rush in this strange exuberant joint, working mostly behind the scenes as part of a sweet, caring family of theatrical masochists. And maybe he does find the rebellion he misses in today's rock, but I sense it's not political or social rebellion so much as rebellion against chance, entropy, decay, the laws of gravity, of the body. It's rebellion against chaos and meaninglessness as well, every motion so timed and tuned. Like a song that feels wild and dangerous because it's played with the power only precision can bring.

But beyond everything is simple relief. Everyone seems happy to shut away the outside world for a while, to watch these live cartoons careen and thump under the lights, to revel in this spectacle that's plastic and ludicrous and ancient and cathartic all at once. It could be the Popchips talking, but maybe we're just keeping it real, which was a popular phrase in the 1990s, back when the Pumpkins were a smash and everybody hated a sellout but nobody could quite define one.